We said, “We have not seen anybody. We had just gone for a walk and we have just come in and we saw you lying down here as if somebody is on top of you and there is nobody. And your wife is on the floor flat. Do something to bring her to consciousness.”

So he did whatever he could. Somehow she came to consciousness. And she asked, “Where is he – the skeleton?”

And the doctor said, “I cannot believe it, because number seventeen is an old skeleton and has never misbehaved, and suddenly it came and knocked on the door and even said, ‘Can’t you recognize me?’” He said, “Now it will be very difficult for me to continue going into that room. I am going to change my department, no more skeletons.”

I said, “You have unnecessarily hallucinated after a whole day working with the skeletons. You may have just seen an illusion – because we were coming, we did not see anybody coming or going, and the key is in your pocket.”

So he saw. He said, “The key is in my pocket.”

I said, “If you want, we can go and see where number seventeen is. “

He said, “No, I won’t allow you to go there. If he has gone out without even opening the door, he can do some harm to you. You need not bother. Tomorrow I am going to change my department.”

He changed his department. The vice-chancellor tried hard, saying, “Skeletons don’t come out, and you have had such a long experience with skeletons.”

He said, “Whatever, but what happened last night, if it happens again I will die. And you have to think about my wife also. She is very delicate and she has had one heart attack already. And if these skeletons start coming in the middle of the night knocking on the door…!”

I have always been puzzled why people are so afraid of skeletons, because they are very poor people – with no life, they cannot do anything. But there seems to be some unconscious current, “We are also skeletons.” Seeing a skeleton, you are seeing yourself without the skin.

And this will be your situation one day. Perhaps the skeleton reminds you of death, it reminds you of your reality which the skin goes on hiding. Otherwise skeletons are very innocent, they have never done any harm to anybody.

I used to sell skeletons from a Mohammedan graveyard because the medical college needed them and they gave a good price for a skeleton. And nobody was ready to bring a skeleton. I had made friends with the guard of the graveyard and arranged that we would split half and half, “Just you dig out some old fellow and I will take him in my car and deliver him to the medical college.”

Once when I was taking a skeleton in my car, a policeman stopped the car – because I was going too fast. He wanted to see my driver’s license. I said, “The fellow in the back seat has it.”

So he looked in the back seat.